Morris has argued that the gender of the dancer doing Dido and the Sorceress doesn’t matter, but when it’s a man, this Dido and Aeneas represents the attempt of homosexual love to break free of external disapproval and internal guilt. (That could even explain, if not redeem, the angular, awkward choreography.) When it’s a woman, the story becomes less metaphorical and more personal: this woman, this man. When Mark danced the two roles, it always seemed to be about Mark (“I’m funny, I’m fabulous, I’m America’s idol” — and he was), in the same way that Baroque opera tends to be about self-expression rather than relationships. Aeneas was an afterthought. Amber Darragh has that same narcissistic quality when she’s in the spotlight — whether as Dido or the Sorceress (and I never see much difference between the two). When she’s with Aeneas or Belinda, however, she becomes half of one, and that lifts Dido to another level; last night’s indelible moments saw her skipping hand in hand with Aeneas and, anchored by Belinda’s hand, leaning out into the universe as if she couldn’t decide whether to stay or go. Craig Biesecker’s Aeneas conjured Balanchine’s Apollo in his reach and scope; he was a hero Dido could look up to, despite being confined by two-dimensional movements that made it seem he’d been lifted from a Greek frieze. Maile Okamura as Belinda curled around the score rather than kick-boxing at it, and she riveted attention elsewhere rather than at herself, as when at the end she bent over the fallen Dido.

The end of this Dido is its glory. Morris, making his Boston debut in the pit, mostly avoids Baroque rhetoric, especially in the choruses, which are tight and singing. The vocal soloists are rewarding but not remarkable; it’s as if their personalities had been sublimated to the choreography, and it didn’t help that the words the women sang were seldom intelligible, though Kendra Colton did well with Dido’s last utterances. It’s here, after Aeneas has left, that Morris stops trying to compete with Purcell and lets his right brain kick in. The dancers process off stage past Dido, two by two, doing less but saying more. The chorus settles into a glorious threnody, Morris outdoes himself (Craig Smith would have been proud) at maintaining the musical line, and yet it’s the dancers’ simple movements that command attention. The last two to go off are Belinda and the Second Woman; the Second Woman disappears but Belinda lingers, love that, unlike Aeneas, doesn’t leave. At moments like these, everybody loves Chunky.

Us, writ large Mark Morris’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato is a dance as big as its name, as big as its illustrious associates and enablers, George Frideric Handel, John Milton, William Blake, and a contemporary galaxy of dancers, musicians, and designers.

Lightweights Two of Boston’s major dance series wound up their 2006–2007 season last week with low-calorie desserts.

Maestro! Next week, the Celebrity Series of Boston brings back Mark Morris’s dance setting of Henry Purcell’s 17th-century English opera Dido and Aeneas .

Mostly Mark Mark Morris has worked with the Mostly Mozart Festival before, but this year’s commission from the 40-year-old summer music series posed a large-scale challenge, a full evening of new work.

Modern romantics Romeo & Juliet, On Motifs of Shakespeare is less of a statement than a supposition: what if we did it a different way?

Measure for measure “Great Ball at the Court of France,” which Ensemble Doulce Mémoire presented at the First Congregational Church in Cambridge last Friday, under the auspices of the Boston Early Music Festival, was a reminder that classical music used to be all about two popular forms, song and dance.

LIGHT WAVES: BOSTON BALLET'S ''ALL KYLIÁN'' | March 13, 2013 A dead tree hanging upside down overhead, with a spotlight slowly circling it. A piano on stilts on one side of the stage, an ice sculpture's worth of bubble wrap on the other.

HANDEL AND HAYDN'S PURCELL | February 04, 2013 Set, rather confusingly, in Mexico and Peru, the 1695 semi-opera The Indian Queen is as contorted in its plot as any real opera.

REVIEW: MAHLER ON THE COUCH | November 27, 2012 Mahler on the Couch , from the father-and-son directing team of Percy and Felix Adlon, offers some creative speculation, with flashbacks detailing the crisis points of the marriage and snatches from the anguished first movement of Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony.